Three Important Things: Cheese, Children, and My Future

There was a sale on cheese...

Fromage blanc: also the name of a yogurt-like product that tastes nothing like this cheese, which is simple and tangy, almost to the point of being sour. I think it's what farmers make when they have nothing else to do with leftover milk (I see a lot of it at the market).

Saint Nectaire: has a too-smooth texture that's akin to that of a Kraft's Single, but with a whole lot more complexity -- the taste changes as you eat it, from sort of smoky and sour to a rich, brie-like cheesiness. I'm sure that's not the correct way to describe this cheese.

Etorki: a fromage au lait de brebis (cheese made from sheep's milk) that hails from the Basque region of France. An honest cheese.

I only included one photo because all three cheeses kinda look like this one (Etorki). I think I'm going to start hitting up the runnier ones next week.

..........

And in between shoving cheese down my maw and braising salmon steaks and climbing rock walls, I go to school. I go to two schools, actually: Ecole Jean Mace and Ecole Marie Curie, both primary schools located in the town center of Gerardmer (i.e., far away from me).

Yes, I have a job -- and I like it, quasiment (kinda). I work 12 hours per week, all school days except Wednesdays ("the kids need a day to rest," one of the teachers told me). I get a two-hour lunch break, seven weeks of paid vacation, and all the tiny cups of coffee I can possibly drink in a day. It's a nice setup.

But it did take me some getting used to. I work in ten different classes (one of which is a videoconference, a near-useless 40-minute session that suffers mostly because of poor video quality and short attention spans), all of which have at least 20 students each. I've been here scarcely two months and I'm just now settling into my role as "teacher," which I most certainly am to these kids -- when I arrive, the normal teachers go into the back of the room and grade papers. So much for being an "assistant."

Working at the primary school, I get to use a great deal of French -- mostly French, actually, for the littlest guys. I've learned some great school-related vocabulary (like how the word for a pushpin, une punaise, is the same word for "stinkbug") and a lot of meaningless chit-chat filler words. After 10 years of countless hours of studying irregular verb conjugations, reading post-WWII absurdist French lit, and discussing how Baudelaire's Spleen uses metaphor, I can finally talk about how my day is going with a French person. Maybe if I majored in French at college, I would be able to make a joke, too!

..........

Lastly: I kind of wanted to keep this one a secret for a little longer, but things have escalated so quickly and I had so many questions to ask of my friends that the cat is really out of the bagel now. I'm applying to graduate school -- for a Master's degree in Comparative Literature. I'm only applying to two programs for now, at Columbia and at The City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. They seemed to be the only schools in New York that had comp. lit. as MA programs (NYU had only a PhD program, the idea of which triggers an unavoidable gag reflex in me), which turned out to be convenient, since they were also the schools with the latest deadlines (April 15th).

I know a Master's degree in Comparative Literature sounds about as useful as does an associate's degree in Liberal Studies, but I have my reasons. First and foremost, I miss school. I miss the academic atmosphere; I miss discussing books with other people who care about them as much as I do; I miss researching; I miss putting my thoughts together formally for someone else to critique and help develop. It's like practicing my violin here -- sure, I still do it, and set my own "practice goals" for myself, but would I prefer to be in an orchestra, playing with dozens of others in harmony, constantly developing and improving my playing in an ever-changing musical atmosphere? Absolutely.

Secondly, comparative literature seems like the next logical step, education-wise, for me. I live comparative literature -- I make sure that I'm reading something in English and something in French at all times, and find no greater pleasure than comparing the nuances between the English and France languages and cultures. My ultimate goal (in life, I suppose) is to become a better writer, which I believe occurs as the result of other sorts of education -- experiencing other writers, history, life itself, writing, developing, criticizing, READING, thinking creatively -- and not from studying writing itself, which is too didactic for me, I think. I don't want to learn how to improve my writing by having someone tell me how to improve my writing; I want to learn about things in life that interest me, and improve by accident, essentially.

I also want to study part-time. I know, even if my GRE scores blow through the roof (which they won't), that I won't be able to get much funding as a Master's student, and I'm not about to go applying for a PhD just because I want money. Sure, getting paid to study and research is pretty cool, but not getting paid off, which is how I feel this money thing works. You apply for "fellowships" to get "stipends" and get "funded" -- and you'd better be motivated, because this whole shebang is going to take about eight years. And in the end, it doesn't even matter if you're motivated by your subject matter, because you can still certainly be motivated by the money, which will continue to dump itself into your student account for as long as you can cogently pull together possibly unrelated facts about Byron's personal life for your next paper.

I don't want that. I'm not about to go living the sickeningly competitive academic life that so many doctoral students live, trying to come up with a dissertation so original that it barely makes sense anymore. I want to study what I want, when I want, and be able to devote as much time to it as I want -- while having a social life, a job, and hobbies. There's nothing worse, in my opinion, than being enrolled in a course that you absolutely love, and being too stressed to write proper papers or do all the reading. This isn't undergrad; I feel like I've wasted too many fantastic courses by being busy, trying to graduate with six majors and forty-five minors, while also assuming as many "leadership positions" as possible. Gross.

If anything, I've learned from living in France that it's okay to live the slow life; in fact, it's healthier, and I prefer it. I don't want to cram my life full of too many classes, and taking four or more graduate-level classes at one time while trying to pay rent on an apartment in New York City doesn't exactly sound like my idea of a jolly good education.

I've been biting my nails and having mini-mental breakdowns about three times a day because of all this, but it's been about two weeks since I've started the application process, and I've calmed down a bit. It's not easy doing all this nonsense from France; I'm crossing my fingers that UD will even send an official transcript overseas.

I jes wanna git me an educashin!